Veni Creator Spiritus

We’re listed in the Times top 5 opera
So there.

We started rehearsals for the Bampton Opera today. It all seems to be very pleasant and quite an inspiring opera. I would link to the interview with the singers on Radio 3, except that it seems to be a couple of days out of the listen again feature.

The website’s http://www.bamptonopera.org/ - go book a ticket for the Bampton Deanery performances (this Friday and Saturday), which are the ones I’m playing in.

According to the conductor “It’s a whole lesbian fantasy, this” and according to the Times it’s “The epitome of opera-in-a-garden”. What more could you want?

This is possibly much too public a place to write this, but that’s never stopped me before.

It seems to be decision week, and it’s a tough decision. On the one hand I have a company that have offered me a good salary, a stable job, a good base from which to live a life and earn some money. A job that’d probably be great in many respects but which in many others I know would leave me feeling incredibly empty.

On the other hand I have a more vocational existence which I don’t want to give up. I have possibilities existing on the edge of my horizon that lean in a more musical direction - a couple of church posts, auditions - things that exist in the haze of possibility but which aren’t yet firm enough alternatives to guarantee an existence.

The problem comes in that the haze isn’t likely to clear before I have to say yes or no. It’s a risky game - if I say yes to the first and then one of the latter beckons I’d feel gutted, but if I say no to the first and none of the latter beckons then I’m left in a horrible mire of poorly-paid temping, probably for the same company.

I’m stuck, and all I can do right now is put it off - to use all the delaying tactics in my power to try and hope it all comes right in the end. Pretty soon, though, that delay is going to run out, and it’s going to be crunch time. Possibly this week, possibly next… who knows.

I’m certainly no genius when it comes to writing poetry or even prose for that matter, but I wrote the following on a lonesome walk this week and thought I’d post it here for posterity’s sake.

Like patchy grass in a meadow
As the shattered stones on the pavement
Like a weathered log as it sits there
As the flaking paint on my wall…

My heart is sparse it longs for passion
Emotions aches as they fade
The sound that once did awake me
Now resonates in a cave

Oh beauty, oh sunlight, the warmth in my soul
Rekindle the ember within
Oh rain that does nurture the shoots of the grass
Bring fresh and green life once again

Quite a weekend… the Cornbury festival, seeing Paul Simon live, the Doctor Who series finale, and a walking trip to the Trout. Most of it done on my own in the absence of any person to share it with, I guess that happens to some people though.

Paul Simon = awesome

Doctor Who I’m not convinced by. The Doctor/Rose thing kinda diminishes the significance of what happened in Doomsday and I think also takes away from something of what that relationship meant. I can see why it was done but I’m not really convinced.

[edit to add]
Yes, it’s gone 2am and I’m playing in a band tomorrow morning - 8:30 I believe. Any bum notes in the service you know why… (it’s ‘cos I’m pretending to be Paul Simon’s keyboard player….)

It seems that pretty soon we’re going to be allowed to branch out beyond the traditional .co.uk .org .com etc. etc. top-level domain names into an almost completely open sphere of naming.

On the one hand, this may seem incredibly freeing, on the other, it seems to me to begin to undermine the structure of the web and turn it even more than it already is into a huge, muddled mishmash. It’s not as if we even use all the domains available to us at the moment. How many sites are there that have a .info extension, for example? It depends very much on how well regulated this is, but I’m not sure I’m in favour of the move at all.

I seem to have come to a real crossroads in my life. It feels like decisions I make in the next few weeks are going to shape the course of things to come in some big ways. I’ve applied for jobs in the past, but I seem finally have come to a place where there are real opportunities out there in a number of directions rather than merely potential failures. September for once seems like a departure point, not merely for the next year but for a longer-term future whatever it may hold. The choices are tough though, so please pray for me.

M

In the absence of any meaningful social life I have spent this evening gardening, watching a romantic movie, drinking sherry, drinking more sherry, drinking tea, bleaching a wall, doing more gardening wondering what on earth to do about employment, and finally doing a job application in 15 steps that asks all sorts of pointless stuff no one could possibly need to know.

In the midst of this full and purposeful existence, the following very much entertained me

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/microsoft/archives/141821.asp

Whilst I could reproduce it here, it is long and probably has much more credibility on the original website. Witness Bill Gates experiencing the Windows user experience we all know and despise.

Go read it.

An interesting post over at trinities beginning a series on how Christian thinkers respond to contradictions. I suspect there are a lot of people who would benefit from the kind of introspection that the series might lead to.

I gather that St Aldates have some kind of google alerts set up, so it will be interesting to see if they pick this up (Pete…?). In any case, we had a sermon this evening on Islam. Fair enough, it’s something important that we really need to engage with as Christians. Gordon preached, and whilst I don’t come from quite the same place as the guy on the matter he said a lot of cool stuff that made sense. I admit I didn’t engage much, I don’t run into Muslims from day to day, and so didn’t really know what to do with it.

Then I got home - and there was a copy of the Shia Newspaper sticking through the letterbox. My first thought was that this really actually does bring the issue to a bit of focus, here are some Muslims who are clearly trying to win our street for Islam in much the same way as HTB distribute the Alpha news everywhere. It’s fascinating how closely the publication parallels Christian equivalents. The front page story is about how some Christian Priest came back from the dead, had a vision of a guy who he later recognised as a Muslim prophet and eventually converted. Inside, we’ve got another miracle that ’scientists can’t explain’ about a tree that bleeds on a holy day and heals people. A bit of stuff about Evolution being rubbish etc. etc.

Interestingly there’s an article by a Christian priest inside about a Muslim guy which finishes with a couple of questions about Jesus. What on earth that’s doing, I don’t know.

So what’s the proper response of the church? A war of miracles in which we try to outdo them with some bigger tales from our side? Stepping back and saying ‘actually, ok, this territory isn’t where the battle is, let’s engage some other way’. It strikes me that perhaps neither really sounds right does it. Gordon was talking about the need to engage with Muslims in love, and I think that is the call of Jesus. Love is at the heart of it, and that’s where the Church needs to find its transforming power.

Links:
http://www.staldates.org.uk/resources.asp - where Gordon’s sermon might appear
http://shianewspaper.com/html/bishop.html - the bishop article